ED raids premises of 3 travel agents

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, November 26

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) today conducted raids on the premises of three travel agents in connection with an illegal immigration racket.

ED officials raided seven places, including offices and houses, and recovered Rs 50 lakh unaccounted cash and some documents that many youth had submitted for processing. The investigating agency suspects that the agents used hawala money to run the illegal immigration racket. The sleuths intend to take up the case further to check any violations of the Foreign Exchange Management Act.

The three agents whose premises were raided are: Raman Kumar of Air Corporate Company, Gundeep Singh of Gurukul Global and Sarabjit Sharma of TNS Migrations. The trio, who have their offices in the same complex — AGI Business Centre near the bus stand, are learnt to be having good professional relations.

According to reports, some local travel agents were helping the youth reach destinations close to Mexico through valid documents from where, they were further being made to take illegal channels through other players in the nexus.

The agents were reportedly providing youth tourist visas till Europe or Middle-Eastern countries from where they were taken further through Madagascar-Guatemala route to reach Mexico. An amount of Rs 20 lakh to Rs 30 lakh was sought from each applicant for processing visas and more money was reportedly taken by sub-agents at other locations.

The officials believe that further raids and probe could break the nexus.

A senior police officer said the office had so far not received any complaint from the deported youth against the travel agents.